The failing health of an incarcerated anarchist has reignited debate in Italy over the harsh prison sentences usually reserved for mafia bosses, with the new right-wing government vowing not to back down.
Nearly 750 people behind bars in Italy are under the country’s unique and highly restrictive detention regime, known as “41-bis”, including 55-year-old anarchist Alfredo Cospito.
Mr. Cospito, sentenced to 30 years in prison for two different crimes, has been on a hunger strike for more than 100 days in a Sardinian prison to protest against his 41-bis, which includes near total isolation and severe restrictions on family visits and other rights.
The worsening of his state of health sparked protests from the anarchic movement throughout Europe, as well as that of Amnesty International.
Last weekend, the Italian consulate in Barcelona was vandalized, a diplomat’s car in Berlin was set on fire and a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a police station in Rome.
On Tuesday, Giorgia Meloni’s government called a press conference to announce that Mr Cospito’s 41-bis status would not be revoked, but said the prisoner had been moved to a Milan prison with a clinic.
“It is unthinkable for the state to give in,” said Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, saying the wave of violence in favor of Mr. Cospito justified his prison regime all the more.
Originally created as an emergency measure in the face of mafia attacks in the 1980s and 1990s, article 41-bis of the penal code has become an essential weapon in the state’s arsenal against crime. organized.
It can also be applied to other violent crimes and terrorism.
“In Western and Northern Europe, this regime (41-bis, editor’s note) is the strictest for dangerous and organized criminals”, explains to AFP Anna Sergi, professor of criminology at the University of Essex. .
Restrictions include solitary confinement in single cells, limited court time and a short monthly visit with family members behind a glass wall.
Books and newspapers sent from outside the prison are prohibited.
The objective is twofold: to cut the prisoners’ communication with the outside, thus preventing the mafia from directing their organizations from the prison; and convince them, because of the harsh conditions, to become collaborators with justice (“repentants”).
Despite campaigns to abolish it, many people in Italy remain supportive “because they associate this regime with the mafiosi, and there is a strong feeling that the mafiosi deserve it no matter what”, Ms Sergi said.
The European Court of Human Rights and the Italian Constitutional Court have called for changes to 41-bis, such as banning censorship of correspondence between inmates and lawyers and allowing inmates to cook in their cells.
According to the prisoners’ rights group Antigone, the application of this regime to Mr Cospito is “disproportionate”.
He was sentenced in 2014 to almost 11 years in prison for shooting the chief executive of a nuclear energy company in the legs two years earlier.
He was later given a separate 20-year sentence for planting two pipe bombs outside a police barracks in 2006, a crime the courts ruled to be terrorist in nature.
He was sentenced last May to 4 years of 41-bis when justice discovered that he had been in contact with anarchists since prison.
He is believed to be the leader of a group of militants who carried out parcel bombs and other attacks on the authorities a decade ago.
In an editorial on Monday, the daily La Stampa recalled that the government did not want to give in to Mr. Cospito, but said the state must act because the prisoner could die while the Italian courts consider the matter.
In December, a court in Rome rejected an appeal by Cospito’s lawyers to revoke the 41-bis.
The Supreme Court has heard a new appeal, the hearing of which is scheduled for March 7. According to local media, four people have died in Italian prisons as a result of hunger strikes since 2009.
02/01/2023 05:03:50 – Rome (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
